


Academia in the Age of the Extinction

by thesubtleone



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Climate horror, Gen, canon typical references to self harm, episode 175 epoch, so use that as your benchmark, this is specifically based on and a continuation of, ymmv on the violence and body horror so take care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25803847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesubtleone/pseuds/thesubtleone
Summary: Two others who do what they must in the world without us
Kudos: 4





	Academia in the Age of the Extinction

Leah knows she's not the only person documenting this. She met a man some time ago who kept quantitative population data on the prescription bottle hermit crabs and the mouldering seagulls and the Styrofoam slime molds. A tally of exactly how many fetid mattresses and refrigerators he had encountered, all of it written and carved into his skin, braided into his hair and beard, pinned to his clothes. A man made spreadsheet. When they first met, her mouth took over, asking how his grad students were doing, how was his coworker? She had never met him. His eyes were soulless as he answered politely. He gave her a business card. She pretended the stains on it were coffee. Her notes summarizing his data and his notes on hers were both titled "UNFCCC 1ST POST-ANTHROPOCENE" though he put the time before the event. She doesn't linger on it.  
Sometimes she visits the professor, though he never has new data. She likes to leave her own observations with him and sit at the back of what is not a lecture hall. It is... not a relief, nor a comfort but a loosening. A beat of silence before the crescendo climbs ever higher.  
The continuation of the world provided the professor with what he needed. He has no digestive nor circulatory system anymore, but that's fine. All he needs, all he's ever needed, was a good, solid pulmonary system, vocal chords that won't tire and his same lecture slides. And now he has them. The car airbags that are now his lungs can speak for longer than his flesh ones ever could, and the rubber bands and guitar strings in his throat don't wear down.  
Of course, no students are there, and the ones that visit always leave again. But that's never stopped him before.  
Leah can't remember if the professor taught her, or if they were colleagues, or if he just reminds her of those she knew. She slips out as quiet as she can when he points to the graph of Mauna Loa Observatory's measured CO2 levels drawn on the wall behind him. The oil that paints the seasonally adjusted levels cuts straight through the blood that dips and rises with each season. There is a part of her that knows it is perfectly to scale with the digital original.  
She doesn't know what those words mean anymore.  
The professor continues lecturing.


End file.
